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and so the cat is out of the bag! EA has done it again! [High Rez Textures Thread]
JeroKane
Member EpicPosts: 7,098
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=162569
Hey everyone, thanks for bearing with us as we investigated the concerns raised here. After investigation, it seems that the confusion here is a combination of a UI issue that's been resolved and a feature that's working as intended, but the reason why it's 'working as intended' needs explanation. First, the UI issue. The preferences menu as it is seen on the Public Test Server for version 1.1 of the game is correct - there are only supposed to be two texture choices, 'Low' and 'High'. This replaces the original three-choice preference of Low/Medium/High because in reality, there was never supposed to be a 'Medium' choice - that was a bug. Here's where we need to explain. As many of you have noted, your character in the game world is rendered using lower resolution textures than inside of cinematic conversation scenes. This was a deliberate decision by the development team. To understand why this was done, I have to briefly talk about MMOs and their engines. In comparison to single player games and other genres of multiplayer online games, MMOs have much higher variability in the number of characters that can be potentially rendered on-screen at the same time. In MMOs, even though most of the time you'll see a relatively small number of characters on screen, there are certain situations in which many more characters will be seen. Some examples of these situations include popular gathering places in-game (in our case, the two fleets), Operations with large teams, and Warzones. In those scenarios the client (and your PC) has to work hard to show off a lot of characters on-screen. During development and testing of The Old Republic, our priorities were to ensure the game looked great and performed well. In testing, we discovered that using our 'maximum resolution' textures on in-game characters during normal gameplay could cause severe performance issues, even on powerful PCs. There were a variety of possible options to help improve performance, but one that was explored and ultimately implemented used what is known as a 'texture atlas'. To understand that I've got to get technical for a minute. When a character in the game is 'seen' by another character - ie, gets close to your field of view - the client has to 'draw' that character for you to see. As the character is 'drawn' for you there are a number of what are known as 'draw calls' where the client pulls information from the repository it has on your hard disk, including textures, and then renders the character. Every draw call that is made is a demand on your PC, so keeping that number of draw calls low per character is important. With our 'maximum resolution' textures a large number of draw calls are made per character, but that wasn't practical for normal gameplay, especially when a large number of characters were in one place; the number of draw calls made on your client would multiply very quickly. The solution was to 'texture atlas' - essentially to put a number of smaller textures together into one larger texture. This reduces the number of draw calls dramatically and allows the client to render characters quicker, which improves performance dramatically. When it comes to cinematic scenes, however, characters are rendered using the higher number of draw calls and maximum resolution textures. This is because in those scenes, we have control over exactly how many characters are rendered and can ensure that the game performs well. The transition between 'atlas textured' characters (out of cinematics) and 'maximum resolution' textures (in cinematics) is mostly hidden by the transition between those two states (when the screen goes black), but obviously it's clear if you pay close attention. In summary; yes, we had a small UI bug that unfortunately caused confusion over how the game is intended to work. The textures you're seeing in the course of normal gameplay are optimized for that mode of play. The textures you're seeing during cinematics are also optimized for that mode of play. They are higher resolution, but that's because we're able to control cinematic scenes to ensure good performance in a way we can't during normal gameplay. We understand the passion and desire for people to see the same textures you see in our cinematic scenes in the main game. Because of the performance issues that would cause for the client, that's not an immediate and easy fix; we need to ensure we're making choices that the majority of our players will be able to benefit from. Having 'atlassed textures' helps performance overall, and that's a very important goal for us. With that said, we've heard your feedback here loud and clear. The development team is exploring options to improve the fidelity of the game, particularly for those of you with high-spec PCs. It will be a significant piece of development work and it won't be an overnight change, but we're listening and we're committed to reacting to your feedback. |
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They are now officialy guilty of blatantly false advertisment!
The game was showcased, hyped and promoted with High Resolution Textures! All screenshots and videos are showing High Resolution Textures!
They made a deliberate and significant design decision that has lowered the overal quality of graphics in the game and didn't communicate this decision with their playerbase, unitl now AFTER release when everyone has PAID for their retail box!
This is going to create such a Back Lash at them like there is no tomorrow! And really... they now rightfully deserve the s-shit storm coming at them!
This is so shady and a low blow underhand decision and hiding it from the playerbase till after release, when people started screaming where the High Resultion Textures were missing!
/utterly disgusted by this!
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I don't think it will really go over that poorly with the player-base. I've heard a lot of complaints about TOR, and I agree with most of them, but very few people are choosing to play or not play the game based on the textures, which we knew all along were crap. I mean, the art-design in this game is so "cartoony" and simplistic that it took this long for people to even notice the difference in fidelity between cutscenes and actual gameplay, so I'm not sure it's going to be that big of a facter in the long run.
Nope I just think people want the option for the game to not look like its 5 years old....
This has sealed it for me, its gradually being getting worse. I was waiting for the textures that don't make it look like console rubbish.
So I guess they are using the wrong engine, as other games seem to manage it...Ouch big hurdle to get over this one.
And yeah sounds like a cover to me too...
Core i5 13600KF, BeQuiet Pure Loop FX 360, 32gb DDR5-6000 XPG, WD SN850 NVMe ,PNY 3090 XLR8, Asus Prime Z790-A, Lian-Li O11 PCMR case (limited ed 1045/2000), 32" LG Ultragear 4k Monitor, Logitech G560 LightSync Sound, Razer Deathadder V2 and Razer Blackwidow V3 Keyboard
Meh could care less either way. I play games for their entertainment value, not how they look. If I wanted to go oooh pretty graphics, I can go watch Avatar. I still play UO from time to time, and thats not even in 3d.
Also if you are disgusted by this, and think this is such a huge deal, you really need to turn on the news more and see what real major corporations are doing to people, not some company that did not include high res textures that a 100 people out of the over 2 million people who bought it, will care about.
My Guild Wars 2 Vids
low blow, disgusted, misleading....... a bit OTT there? MMO's are liable to change -period- and in this case to insure performance quality.
Fine by me.
It isn't really an issue to me. I'm not a fiend when it comes to graphics. Will be lame though for those that do take that into consideration.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
I edited Mr. Reids response and I ask him this as well as others here:
Who the **** does he/EA/Bioware think they are controlling textures on our computer?? That's my job.
OT anyone else logon onto their SWTOR account and get kicked off when the go to the official forums?
First, let me say that I think the game looks good, but I come from WoW, so that's not saying much. I was never "advertised" by high rez textures. I wasn't advertised at all. I had no intentions of playing the game, got into beta and loved it. So do I feel lied to? not really. This is pretty much a complete non-issue for me.
Second, a company that cares more about the player experience and qaulity and is willing to sacrifice some visual appeal? I don't think this is a horrible thing. What good are all the high rez textures if the game plays like shit?
Anyway, as an active player I can tell you, I'm cool. No backlash here. And of the 4 buddies I play with, non of us even new of this issue...lol.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/339443/Video-FollowUp-Guide-For-Enhancing-Graphics-and-Performance-in-SWTORSorry-still-Nvidia-Only.html
I think it's pretty clear from even the responses so far that the currently players don't really have an issue. It's the haters who have talked smack on the game for their entire post history that are having issues with this non-issue.
why does Mythic always remove stuff from their game before it ships?
[mod edit]
I mean honestly isn't there more important things to be worried about?
I am a graphics junky. And so are many others! That's why we are willing to invest good money in our PC set ups and spend a good amount of time and money building and optimising our own PC's!
The fact here is, that the game was always advertised and showcased till the very last moment, even today in developer showcases, promotional material, showing the game in HIGH RESOLUTION textures!
And now, they come out and tell us they made a DELIBERATE decision to remove the HighRes textures and keep that decision secret till after launch!
I find that digusting, shady and very low blow! They are clearly guilty for blatantly false advertisement! Plain and simple!
they also said that they would be improving the gear system from beta (with pretty much everything being customizable) and would reintroduce it. not so sure about that now.
never a truer comment posted.
personally I have no issue at all with the GFX, but some people are obsessed by Shinies and stuff like that, in RL they are called bankers and are as equally despised as Trolls
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Norsefire-logo.png
Erm did you play Beta?
Then you would know the Gear System did change, Care to elaborate more as to your ambigious post?
Before Launch you ahd to use benches to mod gear, orange Custom gear did not exist, Gear had weird mod slots combinations and Mods could not be removed from gear once it was installed.....
Compare to now... mod Anywhere, remove mods whenever, Custom Gear is only level capped to the mod you have installed
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Norsefire-logo.png
...so that means the graphics are going to be ever better than before!!! YES!! TY OP for letting us know about future updates.
I'm still wondering how they can say having a medium option was a bug.
BOOYAKA!
What most people are not getting is that this is important because they misled their player base and they lied to get high end gamers to play their game. A lot of people built new PCs and were looking forward to the hi rez graphics option, which they claimed would be available in the game multiple times.
I am very disapointed, they should have never advertised this falsely, and they should have admited to their design choice sooner. This is a big deal.
I could say only people not having any sort of issue with being decieved are rapid fanboys but I don't throw labels on people like a lot seem to like tohttp://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/339443/Video-FollowUp-Guide-For-Enhancing-Graphics-and-Performance-in-SWTORSorry-still-Nvidia-Only.html
You miss the point of who is Bioware to determine what settings are good on the user end.
I am sorry but this is simply not true. I am a current player, and I am now seriously considering whether or not it is time to put the game down.
Why?
Because throught development and beta we were told the game would look like this:
http://images.wikia.com/swtor/images/5/5e/BountyHunterPowertech.jpg
Not like this:
http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/1963/pvparmor.jpg
And yes, that is a screenshot taken directly from the game, on the current "high" setting.
This is a joke in all honesty, we were promised something which has not been delivered. I don't mind if it takes them a while to fix it, hell I know that games can have bugs and I'm willing to wait on a solution. But to outright call it a "bug" and then just sweep it under the rug and call it nothing; that is a disservice to the customers who payed for a polished product.
That is not what we are getting.
And btw; no, most of the forum goers over on the official forums are far from ok with this choice:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=162569
Yeah go ahead and blame the player base.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
No the graphics you see now are working as intended, they are not going to get any better, they cut out the hi rez option and are now making it only Low and Medium options.
They have good reason, but they are doing explaining why waaaay too late, after claiming hi rez would be in the actual gameplay. This is bad for them in so many ways.
It is possible the medium option was a default option that can with the hero engine.
@ OP - edit your ini file...seriously.